Natalie Portman has refused to let herself be ”pitted against” other actresses.
The 36-year-old actress has spoken out against the treatment of women in Hollywood, claiming that they should not have to fight against one another to be cast as the leading lady in Hollywood blockbusters.
Speaking at The Makers Conference earlier this week, she said: ”It’s been really incredible to gather actresses because I think something that we realised was that we’re usually the only woman at work. So like many other industries, we walk onto a nearly all-male set, and we’re usually alone and we rarely get to interact with each other.
”[There’s power in] just all being in a room together and sharing our experiences and realising how much we’ve been endangered by being isolated.
”We refuse to be pitted against each other. There’s not only one spot. We’re going to make room for all of us. It’s really, really powerful and really incredible and we have all of these new friends.”
It comes after the ‘Annihilation’ actress admitted the Time’s Up and #MeToo initiatives – which aim to eliminate sexual harassment in Hollywood – had made her realise that she has ”100 stories” to tell about sexual misconduct.
She said: ”I went from thinking, ‘I don’t have a story’ to ‘Oh, wait, I have 100 stories.’ And I think a lot of people are having these reckonings with themselves, of things that we just took for granted as like, this is part of the process.”
The star – who has children Aleph, six, and Amalia, 11 months, with husband Benjamin Millepied – recalled one particular incident with an unnamed producer on his private plane.
She added: ”It was just the two of us, and only one bed was made up.
”Nothing happened, I was not assaulted. I did make a point of saying, ‘This does not make me feel comfortable,’ and that was respected. But that was super not OK, you know? That was really unacceptable and manipulative. I was scared.”